Better and Worse
by blueandblack
Summary: Set at the end of Eclipse. After the kiss in the clearing Jacob and Bella try to go back to being 'just friends'. Well, Bella does. Well, sort of.


"Jacob this is ridiculous. You're a mechanic, for the love of God."

He looked up from the rabbit's insides, raised an eyebrow. "I'm a high school student."

Bella sighed. "Well you're basically a mechanic. Anyway, you know enough about cars that at this point, I'm sort of wondering whether you _made_ this happen, just so we'd be stranded together."

"You think I'd sabotage the rabbit?" He looked appalled, truly horror-stricken, and his expression, coupled with the fact that he was now stroking the hood made laughter unavoidable.

"Just shut up and get on with it would you?" she said between giggles.

Jacob smirked. "Jeez Bells, I can't believe you never made the cheer squad. I feel so encouraged right now."

She giggled some more at the mental image of _Bella the Cheerleader_, leaned against the car door and spread her arms out wide. "Gimme a J! Gimme an A!"

Jacob straightened up and stared at her. She just kept grinning back at him, making an attempt at spirit fingers, till his mouth twitched and he exploded with laughter.

He was hanging over the hood, gasping for air, and when he finally recovered enough to speak, he asked her if she had a flashlight.

"Um, no Jake, I don't have a flashlight. Why would I have a flashlight?" she asked, shaking her head.

He shrugged, stretched his arms up like russet skyscrapers. "Just wondering. We're going to have to call a tow truck. It's starting to get dark and I can't see what I'm doing."

"What?" Bella just barely resisted the urge to stamp her foot, settled with whining instead. "A tow truck is going to take hours."

"Yeah, well, what do you want me to do? Leave the rabbit on a dark, deserted road all alone?" he asked, giving the hood another loving stroke for good measure.

This time it only got a giggle-groan hybrid as she looked at her watch.

Jacob kicked at the dirt, ran his hands through his hair, considering and reconsidering his next words. And then reconsidering them again. He sighed.

"You should just call Edward, get him to come pick you up."

Bella put her hands in her pockets, shuffled her feet. They were a fair way out of town, but the way Edward drove he'd probably be in here in no time. Of course then she'd have to explain that the barbecue at Sam and Emily's had gotten boring and she and Jake had decided to take a mini road trip and that was fine, she was sure he would be fine with that, really, but she just didn't want to have to go into it and she knew she… She knew she should be saying something by now.

"Uh, but then you'd be by yourself."

Jacob chuckled, reached through the front window for his cell phone. "I'm not afraid of the dark, Bells."

Bella chewed on her lower lip while Jacob made his calls and by the time he turned back to her she was resolved.

"I'm staying with you," she said, trying not to look too unhappy about it, trying not to look too happy about it either.

Jacob forced a shrug and some words. "You don't have to. I'll be fine."

"Yeah but… you'll be lonely. You know… bored."

He cocked his head to one side. "I can just amuse myself thinking up new cheers for you to practice, it won't be - "

"Look do you want me to stay and wait with you or not?" she snapped, interrupting him.

He blinked, a little surprised at that outburst, then said "Yes please, Miss Bella Swan." with all kinds of mock politeness.

"Okay then," she said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as he slammed the hood shut.

"You cold?" he asked.

"No," she shot back, a little more aggressively than she meant to.

He suppressed a smile. Whoa, touchy. She really was all over the place today. "I was only going to say we should sit in the car."

"I know," she said uncertainly, wrapping her arms tighter around herself.

--

They'd spent a couple of hours doing absolutely nothing plenty of times before, so this should have been easy. Really, falling off a log and all that.

It wasn't.

Somehow all this sitting together in a confined space in the dark while Bella tried not to shiver was driving them both insane, and the conversation had dwindled to a weak rattle between them, lifting dust with every start, stop, shift.

"Why does Washington have to be so damn cold?" she muttered.

Jacob bit his lip. She couldn't sit there shaking, rubbing her arms and complaining about the cold and expect him not to –

He shifted so he was sitting on the edge of his seat, reached out and put his arm around her, pulling her to him.

"What are you doing?!" she squeaked indignantly.

He rolled his eyes. "Putting my arm around you. My supernaturally warm arm."

"That's not - I didn't - "

She didn't know how to finish those sentences and it didn't matter anyway because he didn't care and now, as the heat of him reached out to her, spread like gentle fire over her body, she didn't care either.

"Better?" he asked after a moment.

"Yeah," she admitted grudgingly.

It was better. So very, very much better and so very, very much worse.

"Could you just um..." She hesitated because she really wasn't sure how this would go down. "Could you try not to think of this whole thing around Edward?"

"What? Daddy wouldn't approve?" Jacob asked with something dangerously close to a sneer.

Bella reached for the door handle immediately, trying to shrug his arm off her, but he grabbed her wrist, turned her back around, and he was apologizing. "Sorry, that was low, I'm sorry, really."

She sat back and glared at him out of the corner of her eye and he smiled beseechingly, said he was sorry a couple more times.

"Okay, I forgive you. Just… don't ever make a daddy joke about my fiancé again and we'll be cool." She pursed her lips, eyes darting to him again. "Maybe."

Jacob tried not to laugh at her angry-face. It was difficult. "I swear, no more jokes. I just…" He grimaced, not sure whether serious discussion on this subject was banned too. "You really don't think he's just a little unreasonable with all these, like, checks and monitors?"

"No," she said crossly.

"No?" he asked in a strange, soft voice.

She hardened hers further to compensate for it. "That's what I said, Jacob. No."

Bella didn't see the small smile that flickered at his lips before he brought his free hand to her chin, turned her face around to his. His fingers slid over to her cheek, the rough pad of his thumb brushing lightly over her skin and she inhaled abruptly, looked down, to the side, the other side, up, down again, anywhere but at him until he moved in for the kill, the killer question, and shock tricked her into looking up.

"So does that mean you think he _should_ be worried?" He asked, soft like before, but lower, thicker. "About us?"

She couldn't escape his gaze, he didn't want to run from hers.

Jacob paused for a moment but it was deliberate, it had nothing to do with a hesitation.

"I miss you." He said each word rough-clearly as he leaned closer to her, eyes falling to her mouth.

He kissed her. She knew he was going to do it, I mean, come on, she may be naive but she wasn't a complete idiot, and she wanted to tell him _No, get off, how dare you_ or at least try to turn her head, but it was like she was frozen, just a block of ice carved into Bella until somehow his lips parted hers and the burn of his tongue slipped inside her and then... Oh then she was just a mess.

Apparently the Bella-mess had arms and they were functioning pretty well on their own, shifting with her torso, snaking around his neck, letting her hands loose in his hair, and she was kissing him, Jacob, her Jacob, her funny, sweet, total jerk more-than-best-friend because she missed him too, she really, really missed him.

He gripped her upper thigh and lifted her quick and smooth over him, whispering _Oh Bells I... _and _So much._

Her knees were on either side of his body now, her hand moving up under the short sleeve of his tee shirt, reaching in to find his bare shoulder, and he grinned, leaned back and brushed her fingers away, pulled his shirt over his head with lightening speed and tossed it into the back of the car. Her hands were on his chest immediately, running firmly over his rich skin, one hand drifting down over the thick corded muscles of his stomach as her mouth found his again, tongue reaching into his warmth, lips curling and closing on his over and over, tight and soft.

Jacob's hand moved to the small of her back, dipped under the hem of her shirt because, well, _fair's fair,_ stroked at the skin there, but only for a moment, because he couldn't resist moving up, squeezing his fingers between wire, fabric and flesh.

He turned a quick breath into _I love you,_ another into _You love me._

She pressed her lips to his neck and his head fell back because it was too much, he couldn't take it and he had to ask.

"Would you tell me, Bella? Please?"

She didn't answer, just kissed her way across his face, back to his mouth, and a low, half-torn sound crawled up from his throat to his lips to hers.

"Tell me you love me Bells, tell me."

His large hand was still pushing under her bra, further and further, more and more, and at that moment there was a snapping sound, the cotton flew away from her skin and suddenly his hand was covering her left breast, long fingers stretching up to her collarbone.

"I _ah..._"

If Jacob hadn't been so new to all this, he would have known that if he'd wanted her to talk, he probably shouldn't have caught her earlobe between his teeth right then, dragged his hot fingers down between her breasts, wrapped his other arm around her back and jerked her closer to him. _Ah_ was all he would get if he kept doing things like that.

But hey, it turned out _Ah_ was all he would get anyway, because he suddenly tensed and pulled back from her, rested his head against the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, his groan lost in the low rumble only he could hear.

Bella looked down at him, confused and sort of terrified, because he _stopped,_ he moved away, he didn't -

He smiled, leaned forward and kissed her again slow and deep, reluctant to end it, lips dragging hers with him as far as he could.

He held a hand up to snap his fingers when he said "Cue lights."

A half a second later a golden glow lit the air behind the rabbit and Bella tumbled back into her seat with a loud and uncharacteristic _Shit! Jesus!_ that made Jacob chuckle when really, he probably could have cried right now.

Bella pulled her top down hurriedly, tried and failed to reattach her bra at the back. Jacob didn't bother to retrieve his shirt.

--

They drove back to Forks in silence. Forty-five minutes of pure silence, so awkward and so not what they were used to.

When Jacob pulled up at Charlie's house, Bella finally spoke and it was quiet, tentative. "Jacob, could you please try not to - "

He interrupted her. He knew this line as well as she did anyway, why shouldn't he say it.

" - think about any of that around Edward. Got it."

She smiled weakly, muttered _Thanks, goodnight_ and slid out of the rabbit, shutting the door as gently as she could.

Jacob hadn't had the heart to say anything else. For one dulled, heavy second he'd thought about asking her again.

_Tell me you love me Bells, tell me._

But somehow the crazy, heaven-high of having her in his arms, under his hands, gasping into his mouth... Well, the corresponding low was pure hopelessness, a pit even Jacob Black couldn't crawl out of, not right now.

He sat in the car in front of the house so long he was sort of surprised she didn't come back out, rubbed at his eyes then stared out the window into the trees, trying to pull together enough energy to turn the key.

--

Something had been repeating in Bella's head ever since she'd walked up to her front door, maybe even before...

A low, nagging buzz in the back of her mind that she'd assumed was a sliver of a song, some piece of pop leftover from the radio looping over and over.

It was only later when she lay awake in Edward's arms, eyes carefully closed, that she heard it right.

She tried not to shake too much, would have sobbed and said it out loud a few times if she'd been alone.

--

In the wee hours of the morning when she was really asleep it did slip out.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

Edward pressed his cold lips to her hair, smiled.


End file.
